(FORTUNE Magazine) – Often, the most interesting objects in life are those you never knew existed. Consider the 400-page study that landed on this reporter's desk following a request to a company for an entirely different document. Innocuously named the "Commercial Space Transportation Study," it is signed on the bottom by six aerospace companies, including Boeing, Rockwell (now part of Boeing), Lockheed, and Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin). Although the study is dated May 1994, it is in fact an outline for the future. It evaluates the space markets that could open up if the cost of launching payloads into space were reduced by an order of magnitude.

This is a serious study, crammed with price-demand elasticity curves and written in anonymous bureaucratese. It starts reasonably enough with a discussion of the satellite market and government missions in space. Even the sections about new launch systems for fast package delivery or disposal of hazardous waste seem plausible (send nuclear sludge directly to the sun or stick it on the far side of the moon). But then the topics start to drift into Jetsons territory: orbiting movie studios, artificial space phenomena, lunar flybys, space athletic events, and theme parks.

Leaders in various industries, from manufacturing to entertainment, were contacted for their input. The study's compilers soon learned that CEOs and other high-level corporate officers "have very effective screening procedures to eliminate what are perceived as prank calls and/or inquiries that do not appear to have any impact on their bottom line." Fortunately, not everyone ignored them: "The Home Shopping Network appeared eager to consider the sale of space novelty items, should some become available."

Perhaps the most intriguing proposed project is an orbiting business park with a cluster of research labs. Taking advantage of the access to a vacuum, variable gravity levels, and extreme temperatures, these labs could be used to design new materials, develop drugs, or grow cloned human organs for transplants. In time, the study says, other modules could be added, including a movie studio or a facility for athletic events to be broadcast back to earth (American Gladiators, watch out). There could even be accommodations for well-to-do tourists or a home for retirees. Elderly people who are incapacitated on earth, the study claims, could become more self-sufficient once freed of the burdens of gravity.

The study ends, appropriately, with a section on space burial. It estimates that it would cost $50,000 to send a pound of cremated remains on an infinite journey through space. But for just $3,000, the remains could orbit in the Van Allen asteroid belt.

As it turns out, this is one market actually starting to materialize. A Houston-based company called Celestis offers space burial today by piggybacking rides on rockets carrying satellites (cost: $4,800). The first Celestis launch last April took portions of the cremated remains of psychedelic thinker Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Their remains will eventually reenter the earth's atmosphere and burn up, but that apparently isn't scaring people away. The next flight, scheduled for January, is booked solid.

--Erick Schonfeld